I’ve been giving a little more thought to SOE’s announcement that the next expansion for EverQuest 2 is coming out in February 2010 instead of November 2009. I’ve been reading the forums and some people are arguing that the expansion should still come out in November because players are going to get bored with The Shadow Odyssey and leave the game. Others are arguing that the delay will ease the pressure on players to grind alternate achievement experience and actually play the game the way the developers meant EQ2 to be played again.
I can only speak for myself, but I’m a bit relieved that I have an additional 13 weeks to get the last 14 AA points. With the additional quests added with the recently released GU 52 as well as the upcoming content in GU 53 and GU54, I should have no problem reaching my goal of having a level 80 adventurer/level 80 crafter with 400 secondary tradeskill points in transmuting and 200 AA points. Did I mention my guild hit level 78 over the weekend, so my max level toon might also be in a max level guild? I’ll just have to work on getting the last 5 points in slashing attacks and 53 points in safe fall to have a truly max’d out character.
So with the pressure to hurry up and reach all the goals I’ve been working towards for the last three years greatly reduced, what will I do? Well, I still have a lot I want to do in EQ2. One of the goals I set for myself when I started to play the game was to have maximum level characters in all 9 crafting classes. I currently have 6 master crafters and am busy leveling up my level 65 sage, level 60 armorer and level 32 carpenter. With an extra three months, I think I have an outside chance at getting all three toons up to max level.
Will I start playing any new games? Well, I think playing Runes of Magic has shown me that I don’t think I could start playing another fantasy MMO. EverQuest 2 has just been too good and I’d always be comparing any game with EQ2. But I will start playing single player RPGs again. I bought Fallout 3 and will play it over the upcoming holiday weekend. I’ve been looking at Steam and I spotted a couple of other games who’s demos I may wind up downloading.
Would I play another MMO? Since I’ve already dismissed another fantasy MMO, and quite frankly the superhero MMOs don’t interest me. Going back into Free Realms would be good just to be able to play the mini-games, but there really is only one MMO currently on the market that I am interested in playing. That game is Eve Online. Am I really good enough to play with the big boys, at least on a part-time basis. SOE’s delay in launching Sentinel’s Fate may give me the chance to find out.
